by Lindsay Olsen

When you’ve already been a cyclist, a bartender, and a graphic designer, where do you find your next challenge? For Douglas Perkins, it was at his alma mater, Middlebury College, an historic liberals arts school nestled in the scenic hills of west-central Vermont. “As tends to happen in small-town communities,” he says, the opportunity to serve as coordinator for the campus art museum came unexpectedly, when a friend asked him to fill in during her maternity leave. Perkins stuck around, and eventually the role expanded until he was involved in most aspects of the museum’s day-to-day functions as Associate Director of Operations and Finance.

Having graduated in 1994 with a B.A. in Economics, overseeing the contracts, salaries, budgets, endowments, and acquisitions of an institution didn’t seem like much of a stretch. However, it was Perkins’s personal passion for brand management and advertising that led to his taking responsibility for the museum’s outreach efforts. Over the years, he noticed that the museum had fallen slightly on the list of the college’s priorities – somewhat understandably, he concedes, as running an active collecting museum is expensive when factoring in the costs of acquisitions, insurance, security, climate control…not to mention staff. As a result, Perkins would have to work extra hard to justify their continuing fight for resources.

To do this, he would need to bolster the museum’s connection with its core audience: the students. Despite the promise of the booming social media landscape circa 2010, Perkins found that his attempt to single-handedly build a digital presence wasn’t working as well as he had hoped without the time and staff resources necessary to carefully plan an online marketing strategy. So he hired three student workers to oversee peer outreach and event coordination, which included the development of a Thursday evening activities series called “Nights at the Museum,” designed to extend their hours and get more people into the building. With the elimination of the $15 student membership fee, all 2,600 Middlebury students became automatic members of the museum who receive museum outreach communications.

For the 250-300 art-lovers who pay dues to be involved in museum events (known as Friends of the Museum), Perkins felt it was important to uphold a unique and rather special tradition. Each November, Friends are invited to a purchase party, where they get the chance to view the art and vote on which pieces their annual contributions will buy. “But,” as Perkins reminds me, “the museum is a teaching collection, first and foremost. We never buy anything or accept any gifts unless we can say ‘this is something with which we’ll teach.’” As if to reinforce this, students in the arts disciplines have begun making presentations on the potential purchases. Some go on to serve as paid Museum Ambassadors, or docents, who work closely with local schoolteachers to provide material that is relevant to their curriculum. The immediacy of the process has forged a definite bond between the school and community, which Perkins hopes will continue. The area is rural, but the college “plays a significant part in the cultural goings-on of the region.” With the programs that have been developed over Perkins’s eighteen-year tenure, it seems unlikely that residents or college administrators will forget they are there.

For a listing of upcoming Nights at the Museum and an archive of past events, click here.

by Kara Adams

Who doesn’t enjoy a little friendly competition? That’s the principle behind the annual March Madness bracket hosted by early American history blog The Junto. Run by graduate students and junior faculty, The Junto was started in 2012 and focuses on all aspects of early American history. In addition to posting articles, both by Junto staff and guest contributors, The Junto maintains a bibliography of books published since 2006 relating to early America, publishes its own monthly podcast, the JuntoCast, and provides a list of links to organizations, journals, societies, libraries, and seminars related to the study of early American history. In March, however, the blog’s attention turns to the annual March Madness bracket, which pits early American history resources against each other in a month-long tournament.

Described as “early American history nerdyness [mixed] with basketball geekyness,” the first year of the Junto’s March Madness bracket ran in March 2013, accepting nominations for books focused on the topic of early American history. Since then, each year has had a theme for nominations: books published since 2000 in 2014’s round, primary sources in 2015, journal articles in 2016, and books published since 2014’s competition in 2017. This year’s theme? Digital projects, a theme the announcement post acknowledged is “defined broadly” by the Junto’s staff.

And broad the nominations turned out to be. The final tournament list is composed of eight brackets: Teaching Resources & Podcasts; Empire and Founding Documents; Data Visualization And Geospatial Projects; Blogs and Online Publications; Digital Archives; Newspapers and Ephemera; Transcription and Web Projects; and Digital Editions. The variety of the nominated projects is impressive, ranging from databases of advertisements for runaway slaves, to papers from the Salem Witch Trials, to podcasts with over 200 episodes.

The March Madness competition has exploded in the years since its inception: while the first final boasted “almost 250 unique IP addresses” throughout the competition the total number of votes cast in the 2017 competition was a whopping 8,175 votes. Even more impressive, the current competition is likely to easily surpass those numbers—as of the 2019 bracket’s midpoint at round 3, over 6,000 votes had been cast. (The Junto undertook a full website revamp in 2018, and didn’t run a March Madness bracket that year.) Posts listing the polls have also received around 100 shares each on Facebook, and the Junto generates a hashtag each year for participants to use on Twitter. Voting is fast-paced and anonymous; the polls are posted for two days, with a day in between for the blog’s staff to create the next day’s bracket. The blog’s staff have been sure to note that it’s all for fun, cautioning that resources are vying for the title of “readers’ favorite,” not necessarily “best.” An atmosphere of friendly competition suffuses the comments, and the wide field of nominations is an opportunity for the Junto’s readers to get familiar with resources they may not have known about before.

While all the previous rounds have served the function of an outreach campaign for the Junto itself—and seen some measure of success, if the steadily-increasing number of votes per year is any indication—2019’s tournament is somewhat unique in that it also has the potential to serve as outreach for the projects nominated. Many of the projects are ongoing, and many have creators or staff members interested in spreading the resources they’ve created to the wider public. The March Madness bracket affords the people working on the nominated projects the opportunity to promote their work, and to help spread the resources being created to a wider audience, not just from the Junto’s reader base, but on social media as well. Participants each year are encouraged to use the associated hashtags, and the #JMM19 hashtag has seen regular use on Twitter throughout the duration of the tournament, both from individuals involved in running the nominated projects and from Junto readers promoting their favorite projects.

The 2019 March Madness bracket has concluded, and with a razor thin margin of 52% to 48%, Colonial North America at Harvard Library is walking away with the championship title. While Colonial North America at Harvard Library and its final-round opponent, The Adverts 250 Project, will undoubtedly benefit from the publicity around the championship battle, it’s likely that all 64 projects have reaped some of the outreach benefits from the competition itself—increased social media visibility and exposure to the Junto’s readers has surely had an impact on the projects in the running, and on the Junto’s readership. After six years of sustained growth and increased participation, the yearly competition is certainly a tradition worth repeating.

by Jade Mejia

Overview

According to their website, the Library Innovation Lab is “a dynamic group of thinkers and doers working to make libraries better by exploring the countless, dimly lit pathways that connect libraries to the larger world.” The Library Innovation Lab is located in the Harvard Law School Library, and their main focus each year is on large multi-year projects and a handful of smaller projects that they call sketches.

The Library Innovation Lab’s mission of “libraries being universal” is shown in their want and need for the projects to be seen and worked under multiple lenses, which is reinforced by the location of the lab, as the website states, “[the projects] benefit greatly from the deep legal thinking and scholarship that surrounds us. We often approach library challenges using our law school library lens, but we work hard to make sure our local efforts have broad application.” Under this mission and scope it gives people of multiple backgrounds the chance to add to the ongoing projects.

Outreach Aspect

The Library Innovation Lab (LIL) works at “the intersection of libraries, technology, and law”, and have four different ways a person is able to collaborate with the lab. These different ways are by: 1.) contacting them via email and stating your interest in one of their ongoing projects or sketches in order to be a general collaborator, 2.) applying to be a Summer Fellow, 3.) applying to be summer intern, and finally 4.) applying to be a Research Fellow. The LIL team is also heavily active on Twitter, and tout that it is the place to look for the most up-to-date information. Given the multiple outreach access points to those who are interested in projects that intersect library, law, and technology, this innovative group shows how easy collaboration can be.

Projects

      I.            Active Projects

On their website, LIL has listed their ongoing projects as well as their past completed projects, so that possible collaborators can get an idea about what the institution is in the process of working on.  When you click into the project thumbnails you are led to a project summary, that outlines three main ideas: 1.) what does the project do/where you can find it, 2.) why does it exist, and 3.) how you can learn more in case you want to use the resource, or help work on it.

Pictured above are a few examples of their ongoing projects, such as H2O that is a platform made for sharing, creating, and remixing open access course materials, specifically legal textbooks and course work that are known for being expensive and too heavy for everyday carrying around.

 

      II.            Sketches

Sketches are the ideas and brainstorms about a topic before a project is actualized, or as LIL states: “Before it’s a project it’s a sketch. Sketches are a way to get a handle on an idea and see where it goes. It’s what’s on our mind.” On LIL’s website they showcase the sketches with thumbnail images, a quick description of the sketch, and the date it was started.

This method provides interested collaborators a way to figure what stage in a project’s timeline they want to participate, as well as giving collaborators an idea of what is to come from the innovation lab.  When you click into the sketch it outlines three main ideas, 1.) what does the sketch do/where you can find it, 2.) why does it exist, and 3.) how you can learn more in case you want to use the resource, or help work on it. Pictured above are a few of the sketches they currently have open.

by Robert Sanford

“I really want to change the ‘clubhouse.’”

Suanna Crowley and I met at the Diesel Cafe in Somerville for what would be a two-hour interview. The week prior, I had sent an email with five questions about Suanna’s upbringing, education, and asking for information about her role at the Massachusetts Archaeological Society (MAS). Suanna texted me that she was getting a coffee and I knew when she walked over wearing sparkling grey Converse Chuck Taylor sneakers that the interview was going to be fantastic.

Forty-five minutes into our conversation Suanna caught me off guard when she stated that she is affectionately known as “Dr. Dirt.” I laughed aloud and she said, “I have it as my license plate if you want to see it.” It became clear later that someone who has known since fifteen years old that archaeology would be their life’s passion would be known amongst friends and professionally as “Dr. Dirt.”

I asked Suanna about her education and upbringing and if was it always her intention to work with a cultural heritage institution, “I grew up in Washington, D.C., first in the neighborhoods around American University and later in Northern Virginia. I loved being in the houses of friends whose families spoke different languages, ate different foods, and celebrated different holidays.” Suanna understood early that she wanted to be a part of these global communities and learn as much as she could about culture, history, and countries.

At fifteen, Suanna completed a summer school program sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities. She recalls fondly traveling to the American southwest for a month of intensive archaeological with members of the Hopi Tribe and professors from Northern Arizona University. That was all she needed to experience and when it came time for college she attended the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. Her studies and research at William and Mary focused on the geosciences, specifically sedimentology, geomorphology, mineralogy. Suanna would continue on to New York University in Manhattan to obtain a Ph.D in geoarchaeology and along the way receive an M.A and a M.Phil. In Suanna’s words, “Geoarchaeology combines anthropological perspectives and geoscientific methodologies.”

Throughout its 80-year history, the core values of MAS are the dual goals of preservation and education. Opening in 1988, the Robbins Museum at MAS is an important repository for statewide materials related to the Indigenous Peoples of New England. The museum’s collection tops 150,000 objects and its ethnographic materials include a group of rare figurines and dolls from Native American Tribes across the US.

Crowley herself wears many hats at MAS. Organizational efforts include setting the vision and agendas for annual meetings, management of the board and museum volunteer teams, and coordination with outside partners. Suanna leads the Development Committee which includes doing research on prospects and grant writing. While her tenure as President is limited to two two-year terms she is conscious of posterity. A topic we talked about in our interview was “changing the clubhouse.” Not a coup d’état, but a change in values and strategy. In the current economy, patrons are not paying for membership and outreach is as crucial now as it ever has been in years prior. Patrons are more concerned about what the institution can do for them and not what they can do for the institution. A significant change that Suanna is making at the upper echelon is repairing relationships with tribal communities, something that, in the past, has not been a priority of MAS. The relationship that the tribal communities have with these artifacts is a top concern for Suanna and repatriation is a priority for MAS. According to Suanna, the MAS is in a period of transition. They are actively reviewing their mission and organization. Crowley states “We are growing in the direction of a more open, accessible, useful resource for researchers, tribal affiliates, and the general public.”

My closing question to Suanna was, “What do you tell people you do?”, her response was simple,  “I am an archaeologist. Even though my career path has taken me in several different directions, the underlying professional identity is the same. What I’ve done with it is much more than I expected.”

 

Further information about the Massachusetts Archaeological Society can be found on their website https://massarchaeology.org